Anxiety grips workers at doomed Chernobyl nuclear plant

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine - Andriy Shauman angrily pointed to a switch hidden under a sealed metal lid on the reactor control panel at Chernobyl, the atomic plant whose name is synonymous with nuclear disaster.

''This is the one that will shut down the reactor. For $2,000, I'll let anyone push it when the time comes,'' Shauman, Chernobyl's deputy chief engineer, joked bitterly.

When that time comes on Dec. 15, environmental activists, governments and ordinary people the world over will be relieved. But for the 5,800 workers at Chernobyl, it will be a day of mourning.

''Who would be glad to see his piece of bread snatched away?'' Shauman snapped.

On Dec. 15, it will take only a few seconds for graphite rods to slide into the core of Chernobyl's only functioning reactor and stop its work - nearly 15 years after the 1986 explosion that contaminated broad swaths of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and spewed a radioactive cloud across Europe.

Chernobyl sits inside a badly contaminated ''exclusion zone,'' with a radius of 19 miles, where road signs point to abandoned villages overgrown with grass. In Pripyat, the town that housed plant workers before the explosion, thieves have emptied the desolate high-rises of everything, including wall-plugs and faucets.

A visit to the plant feels like stepping back a decade or two.

In the control room, white-coated operators with radiation counters pinned to their breast pockets watch flickering light displays that look like something from an old science fiction film.

Outside, workers flock to the plant's dining room, past a large bust of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin.

Many of the workers came here from Moscow and Soviet nuclear research centers when Chernobyl was built in the 1970s. It was a time of optimism for the nuclear energy industry, and Chernobyl became a place of pride.

But the 1986 accident changed all that.

The disaster is believed to have killed at least 8,000 people, most from radiation-related diseases, and damaged the health of an estimated 3.4 million people in Ukraine alone.

But it didn't convince the Soviet Union to close the plant. Nor has independent Ukraine been eager to shut it down; it has closed only one reactor so far. Another was disabled by a fire in 1991, and now only reactor No. 3 is operating.

Only after years of high-level international pressure did Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma announce last month that the plant would close for good in December.

''The decision is taken and we'll close down here,'' said Chernobyl spokesman Stanislav Shekstelo. ''But it will be a sad day for us.''

The energy-strapped nation has insisted on foreign aid to build two new reactors to compensate for the energy that will be lost when Chernobyl shuts down. Ukraine also needs money to repair the leaky concrete and steel shelter covering the exploded reactor No. 4, and help finding new jobs for the plant's workers.

On Wednesday, representatives of 40 donor nations meeting in Berlin drummed up enough pledges to cover almost the entire cost of repairing the shelter, estimated at $768 million.

But jobs are tougher to come by. Ukraine's four remaining nuclear plants and those in neighboring Russia are not hiring, Chernobyl's employees say. And personnel for the two new reactors that may be completed, at the Rivne and Khmelnitsky plants, were recruited long ago.

Chernobyl's operators wearily repeat the customary arguments of nuclear power advocates: Atomic plants are ecologically better than ones fed by coal. They pollute less and don't claim coal miners' lives. Renovated Soviet-designed reactors are safe. Chernobyl could work well into 2011.

Even according to the current closure plan, the plant will be working in some form for several more years. After reactor No. 3 is shut down, its safety systems will have to be kept working as nuclear fuel rods are unloaded and some components removed - a process due to start only in 2004.

Chernobyl officials say 300-400 people will be dismissed every year until only about 2,000 remain to work on the sarcophagus and maintenance of the plant. In the control room, the operators fear they'll eventually have nowhere to go.

''It's like killing a living being,'' somebody mutters.